Culture-Specific First Meeting Encounters between Virtual Agents

We present our concept of integrating culture as a computational parameter for modeling multimodal interactions with virtual agents. As culture is a social rather than a psychological notion, its influence is evident in interactions, where cultural patterns of behavior and interpretations mismatch. Nevertheless, taking culture seriously its influence penetrates most layers of agent behavior planning and generation. In this article we concentrate on a first meeting scenario, present our model of an interactive agent system and identify, where cultural parameters play a role. To assess the viability of our approach, we outline an evaluation study that is set up at the moment.

[1]  James Noble,et al.  Persuasive interaction for collectivist cultures , 2006, AUIC.

[2]  William Ferguson,et al.  Simulating scenarios for research on culture & cognition using a commercial role-play game , 2005, Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference, 2005..

[3]  Robert Trappl,et al.  Agent Culture: Human-Agent Interaction in a Multicultural World , 2004 .

[4]  David J Marchette.  Bayesian Networks and Decision Graphs , 2003, Technometrics.

[5]  M. Knapp,et al.  Interpersonal communication and human relationships , 1995 .

[6]  P. Ekman.  Telling lies: clues to deceit in the marketplace , 1985 .

[7]  Penelope Brown,et al.  Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage , 1989 .

[8]  Mitsuru Ishizuka,et al.  AutoSelect: What You Want Is What You Get: Real-Time Processing of Visual Attention and Affect , 2006, PIT.

[9]  David G. Novick,et al.  A Computational Model of Culture-Specific Conversational Behavior , 2007, IVA.

[10]  Elisabeth André,et al.  The CUBE-G approach – Coaching culture-specific nonverbal behavior by virtual agents , 2007 .

[11]  Shinobu Kitayama,et al.  Culture and basic psychological processes , 1996 .

[12]  A. Kimball Romney,et al.  Variations in value orientations. , 1961 .

[13]  Francisco Iacobelli,et al.  Ethnic Identity and Engagement in Embodied Conversational Agents , 2007, IVA.

[14]  Shrikanth Narayanan,et al.  Tactical Language Training System: Supporting the Rapid Acquisition of Foreign Language and Cultural Skills , 2004 .

[15]  P. Greenbaum,et al.  Varieties of touching in greetings: Sequential structure and sex-related differences , 1980 .

[16]  E. Hall.  The Silent Language , 1959 .

[17]  H. Chad Lane,et al.  Teaching Negotiation Skills through Practice and Reflection with Virtual Humans , 2006, Simul..

[18]  P. Petta,et al.  Emotions in Humans and Artifacts , 2003 .

[19]  M. Broadway,et al.  Exploring Culture: Exercises, Stories, and Synthetic Cultures. , 2006 .

[20]  Matthias Rehm,et al.  Creating a Standardized Corpus of Multimodal Interactions for Enculturating Conversational Interfaces , 2007 .

[21]  F. Strodtbeck,et al.  Variations in value orientations. , 1961 .

[22]  Finn V. Jensen,et al.  Bayesian Networks and Decision Graphs , 2001, Statistics for Engineering and Information Science.

[23]  Stacy Marsella,et al.  Tactical Language Training System: An Interim Report , 2004, Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

[24]  M. Argyle.  Bodily communication, 2nd ed. , 1988 .

[25]  Shalom H. Schwartz,et al.  Identifying Culture-Specifics in the Content and Structure of Values , 1995 .

[26]  Zsófia Ruttkay.  Cultural dialects of real and synthetic emotional facial expressions , 2009, AI & SOCIETY.

[27]  Elisabeth André,et al.  Talk is silver , silence is golden : A cross cultural study on the usage of pauses in speech , 2007 .

[28]  E. Hall,et al.  Hidden Differences: Doing Business with the Japanese , 1987 .

[29]  Stella Ting-Toomey.  Communicating Across Cultures , 1999 .

[30]  Nipan Maniar,et al.  Designing a mobile game to reduce culture shock , 2007, ACE '07.

[31]  Elisabeth André,et al.  Too close for comfort?: adapting to the user's cultural background , 2007, HCM '07.

[32]  A. Kendon.  Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in Focused Encounters , 1990 .

[33]  Eileen Newmark,et al.  Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication , 1989 .

[34]  R. Bhagat.  Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations , 2002 .

[35]  H. Triandis,et al.  Cultural influences on personality. , 2002, Annual review of psychology.

[36]  James Noble,et al.  Factoring culture into the design of a persuasive game , 2006, OZCHI '06.

[37]  Elisabeth André,et al.  Perception and Interactive Technologies, International Tutorial and Research Workshop, PIT 2006, Kloster Irsee, Germany, June 19-21, 2006, Proceedings , 2006, PIT.

[38]  E. Hall,et al.  The Hidden Dimension , 1970 .

[39]  Ruth Aylett,et al.  Culture–personality based affective model , 2009, AI & SOCIETY.

[40]  Eugene Ball.  A Bayesian Heart: Computer Recognition and Simulation of Emotion , 2006 .